Leadership Quotes

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

“Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change.”
— Peter F. Drucker

“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
—Harvey S. Firestone

“Leaders unwilling to seek mutually workable arrangements with systems external to their own are not serving the long-term interest of their constituents.”
— John Gardner

“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind in others the conviction and will to carry on.”
— Walter Lippman

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
— Ralph Nadar

“People are persuaded by reason, but moved by emotion; [the leader] must both persuade them and move them.”
— Richard M. Nixon

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.”
— Albert Schweitzer

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
— Bill Gates

“You manage things; you lead people.”
— Grace Murray Hopper

“When building a team, I always search first for people who love to win. If I can’t find any of those, I look for people who hate to lose.”
— H. Ross Perot

“Leadership has a harder job to do than just choosing sides, it must bring sides together.”
— Jesse Jackson

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising every time we fail.”
— Confucius

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader.”
— Max DePree

“If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.”
— Henry Kissinger

“Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.”
— John D. Rockefeller

“Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”— William Shakespeare

“The well-run group is not a battlefield of egos.”
— Lao Tzu

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you may help them to become what they are capable of being.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”
— Woodrow Wilson

“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.”
— Ken Kesey

“Neither success nor failure is ever final.”
— Roger Babson

“We should be careful to get out of an experience all the wisdom that is in it not like the cat that sits on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot lid again-and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”
— Mark Twain

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
— Margaret Mead

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
— Abraham Lincoln

“Contrary to the cliche, genuinely nice guys most often finish first or very near it.”— Malcolm Forbes

“I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.”
— Harry S. Truman

“Personal initiative, competitive selection, the profit motive, corrected by failure and the infinite process of good housekeeping and the personal ingenuity—here constitute the life of a free society.”
— Winston Churchill

“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.”
— Chinese Proverb

“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”
— Stephen R. Covey

“Effective interdependence can only be built on true independence.”
— Stephen R. Covey

“It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.'”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.”
— Walter Cronkite

“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”
— John Kenneth Galbraith

“The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.”
— Gail Sheehy

“Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader.”
— General George S. Patton Jr.

“Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.”
— Warren Bennis

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Nurture your mind with
great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”
— Benjamin Disraeli

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
— Henry Ford

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
— John F. Kennedy

“The leader innovates; the manager administrates. The leader focuses on people; the manager focuses on systems and structure. The leader inspires; the manager controls. The leader is his own person; the manager is a good soldier. The leader sees the long-term; the manager sees the short-term. The leader asks ‘what and why?’; the manager asks ‘how and when?’ The leader does the right thing; the manager does things right.”
— Warren Bennis

“Management works in the system; leadership works on the system.”
— Stephen R. Covey

“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is
near.”
— Jack Welch

“The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.”
— Charles De Gaulle

“I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.”
— Bishop Desmond Tutu

“Unpredictability is the greatest asset a leader can have.”
— Richard M. Nixon

“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
— Abraham Lincoln

“Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.”
— Warren Bennis

“I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.”
— Sir Winston Churchill

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.”
— Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

“Effective leadership is the only competitive advantage that will endure. That’s because leadership has two sides – what a person is (character) and what a person does (competence).”
— Stephen R. Covey

“Some men see the world as it is and ask why; others see the world as it might be and ask why not.”
— Bernard Shaw

“The price of greatness is responsibility.” Winston Churchill

“The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.”
—Ray Kroc

“If you don’t choose to do it in leadership time up front, you do it in crisis management time down the road.”
— Stephen R. Covey

“Managers are people who do things right, and leaders are people who do the right thing.”— Warren Bennis

Choosing to be authentically present with others involves discovering, clarifying, and expressing such things as what you believe, value, want, and feel – that is, comunicating to others the essence of who you are.
— Robert Crosby.

Even as it hath been said:
‘Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed,
nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely,
nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the capacity of those who hear it.’
– out of “Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’ullah”.

Trust has nothing to do with moral courage.
It occurs when we have nowhere else to turn, when we reach the end of our need to control.
-Rodney Smith, “Lessons from the Dying”

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

Peace.
It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work.
It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.
(unknown)

It is not proper to watch other people. This will not help your practice. If you are annoyed, watch the annoyance in your own mind. If others’ discipline is bad or they are not good monks, this is not for you to judge. You will not discover wisdom watching others. Monks’ discipline is a tool to use for your own meditation. It is not a weapon to use to criticize or find fault. No one can do your practice for you, nor can you do practice for anyone else. Just be mindful of your own doings. This is the way to practice.
-Ajahn Chah, “Bodhinyana”

Expectations are resentments under contruction.
– Heard on NPR.

Human beings are like tea bags. You don’t know your own strength until you get into hot water.
– Bruce Laingen, one of the American hostages held in Iran for 444 days

For every complex problem in the world, there exists a simple solution — which is almost always wrong.
– H.L. Mencken

It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best.’ You have got to succede in doing what is necessary.”
– Winston Churchill

If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.
– Yogi Berra

The fact that we have the discipline to put ourselves through pain to get to a given objective does not mean that we have the obligation to do so.
– Jerry Fagen

A third reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not. Conflicts of interest are inherent to the human condition, and we are apt to want our version of the truth, rather than the truth itself, to prevail.
— Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

Only mediocre people are always at their best
– Somerset Maugham

A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.
– Ed Land (of Polaroid)

Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third,
capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least,
experience.Without integrity, motivation is dangerous;
without motivation, capacity is impotent;
without capacity, understanding is limited;
without understanding, knowledge is meaningless;
without knowledge, experience is blind.
Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the
other qualities.- Dee Hock ( http://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/dee2.html)

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Primary Goals sits at the intersection of three core ideas about communication:

Leaders create vision by communicating a compelling future to their teams.

Teams create success based on how effectively the communicate and coordinate with each other.

Entrepreneurial ventures are successful only when they communicate value to people with a concern that the business can take care of

In all cases, it's about Conversations for Committed Results. That's our Primary Goal.